NJIT set for return of TED conference

A speaker on stage at TEDx NJIT last year - (Romer Jed Medina on Flickr)

A group of scientists, students, artists and engineers will come together for the annual TEDxNJIT conference next month to preach the benefits of putting ideas both big and small into action.

The annual event, to be held Sept. 12 at the Jim Wise Theatre at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in Newark, is an independently organized offshoot of the international TED organization, which promotes "ideas worth spreading."

The NJIT conference will explore how small ideas can be implemented on a larger scale, and how large ideas can be pared down to have a more targeted impact — all in the interest of innovation.

"With the success of our previous TEDxNJIT events, we wanted to focus this event on ideas that can impact our world both today and in the future," said event co-organizer Judith Sheft, associate vice president technology development at NJIT, in a statement. "We have an outstanding array of thinkers and visionaries discussing a topic of interest to everyone, especially as we try to individually make the world a better place."

Speakers for the event include NJIT professor Treena Livingston Arinzeh, an expert in stem-cell research who discovered that adult stem cells taken from one person could be implanted in another without being rejected. Adam Falkner, another scheduled speaker, is a high school English teacher in Brooklyn, N.Y., who founded the Dialogue Arts Project, an organization that uses the arts as a means of bridging cultural divides in schools. And Nancy Thornberry, a former senior vice president at Merck & Co. Inc. who helped the company develop a treatment for Type 2 diabetes, also is on the speaking roster.

Tickets for the event cost $30 for the general public and $15 for students. There are 100 tickets available, and can be purchased online.